Keep Holding On
by estrelita
Summary: PostHP7. Capturing the beauty and struggles that they all went through. Every single one of them showed true endurance and love for one another. They fought long and hard for what they believed in and for each other, and for life. They kept holding on.


**Hello again, it's been quite some time simce I've written anything or even been on fanfiction. Alot of things have been going on in my life right now nad I just don't seem to have the time any more. But I still love all you guys and wish I could be on here more often. Now that I'm out for Christmas vacation, hopefully I can read more of your guys' work. I hope you enjoy this piece of writing. I write this the night after I finished the 7th HP book 9which only took me two days to read0 but i just haven't found the time to type it up and post it. And I just thought this was a way of stringing past events together for a conclusion. Let me know what you think.**

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and most of this work is taken straight for JK herself. I just used my creativity to string pieces together for your intertainment. :) I hope you enjoy.

**HAPPY HOLIDAYS & HAPPY NEW YEAR! (ooooo 2008!)

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Song:Keep Holding On 

**Artist:** Avril Lavigne

_"Ginny, listen . . ." he said very quietly, as the buzz of conversation grew louder around them and people began to get to their feet, "I can't be involved with you anymore. We've got to stop seeing each other. We can't be together."_

_She said, with an oddly twisted smile, "It's for some stupid noble reason, isn't it?"_

_"It's been like. . . like something out of someone else's life, these last few weeks with you," sad Harry. "But . . . we can't . . .I've got things to do alone now."_

_She did not cry, she simply looked at him._

_"Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He's already used you as bait once, and that was just because you're my best friend's sister. Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up. He'll know, he'll find out. He'll try and get to me through you."_

_"What if I don't care,?" said Ginny fiercely._

_"I care," said Harry. "How do you think I'd feel if this was your funeral . . . and it was my fault . . ."_

_She looked away from him, over the lake._

_"I never really gave up on you," she said. "Not really. I always hoped . . . Hermione told me to get on with my life, maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more- myself."_

_"Smart girl, that Hermione," said Harry, trying to smile. "I just wish I'd asked you sooner. We could've had ages . . . months . . . years maybe . . . "_

_"But you've been too busy saving the Wizarding World," said Ginny, half laughing. "Well . . . I can't say I'm surprised. I knew this would happen in the end. I knew you wouldn't be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort. Maybe that's why I like you so much."_

_With a miserable gesture, Harry got up, and turned his back on Ginny and on Dumbledore's tomb, and walked away, around the lake._

- - - - -

_A soft summer breeze blew through the streets of Hogsmeade and ruffled __the hair__s__ and clothes of people bustling in the small station. Students of all ages were rushing around, making sure they hadn't forgotten anything in the castle, saying good-bye to friends, and running into stores to pick up last minute goodies. The sadness of Dumbledore's funeral still lingered through the air and made faces fall and made for more tearful good-byes._

_Ginny caught sight of Harry and walked toward him. She placed a hand on his shoulder and heaved a heavy sigh. "Tell me this isn't the end," she whispered._

_"I don't want to put you in danger, Ginny," Harry sighed. "I wish it didn't have to be like this, but with Voldemort out there, I can't take any risks."_

_"But once he's gone, you'll come back to me. Won't you?"_

_Harry paused, as much as he wanted to say 'yes', he didn't want to go making promises, when he had no idea if he would survive. "I'll always love you, no matter what happens. Just remember that."_

_Ginny closed her eyes and nodded. She wrapped her arms around Harry's next and hugged him. "Promise me you'll be careful."_

_Harry kissed her softly on the forehead__ "I'll try my hardest. But Voldemort isn't the safest person, now is he?" He tried to smile, but he just couldn't. As they pulled apart__ Ginny took one last look in Harry's emerald green eyes. She saw her own face reflected back in them. She also saw a lingering sense of loneliness._

_She slipped her hand into __his and squeezed it. "You're not alone in this__ Harry__ we're all behind you, all the way."_

_Harry knew she was right. "But I don't want anyone else to get hurt. There's something that I need to do alone."_

_Ginny nodded, showing that she understood, and squeezed Harry's hand one last time._

**You're not alone together we stand**

**I'll be by your side**

**You know I'll take your hand**

_"But where will you go if you don't come back to school?"_

_"I thought I might go back to Godric's Hollow," Harry muttered. He had had the idea in his head ever since the night of Dumbledore's death. "For me, it started there, all of it. I've just got a feeling I need to go there. And I can visit my parents__ I'd like that."_

_"And then what?" said Ron._

_"Then I've got to track down the rest of the Horcruxes, haven't I?" said Harry, his eyes upon Dumbledore's white tomb, reflected in the water on the other side of the lake. "That's what he wanted me to do, that's why he told me all about them. If Dumbledore was right__- and I'm sure he was__- there are still four of them out there. I've got to find them and destroy them, and then I've got to__go after the seventh bit of Voldemort's soul, the bit that's still in his body, and I'm the one who's going to kill him. And if I meet Severus Snape along the way," he added, "so much the better for me, so much the worse for him."_

_There was a long silence. The crowd had almost dispersed now, the stragglers giving the monumental figure of Grawp a wide berth as he cuddled Hagrid, whose howls of grief were still echoing across the water._

_"We'll be there Harry," said Ron._

_"What?"_

_"At your aunt and uncle's house," said Ron. "And then we'll go with you wherever you're going."_

_"No-" said Harry quickly._

_"You said to us once before," said Hermione quietly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?"_

_"We're with you whatever happens," said Ron. "But ma__t__r__e, you're going to have to come around my mum and dad's house before we do anything else, even Godric's Hollow."_

_"Why?"_

_"Bill and Fleur's wedding, remember?"_

_"Yea, we shouldn't miss that," he said finally._

Hermione remembered that day as if it were yesterday. She knew there where bumpy roads ahead, but she wanted Harry to know that she wouldn't abandon him. That she would stand by his side and help him, no matter what. She would never turn her back on her one of her best friends. She wouldn't give in, she would help.

And nothing Harry said to try and stop them, could change her mind.

**When it gets cold, and it feels like the end**

**There's no place to go, you know I won't give in**

**No I won't give in**

_Ginny looked up into Harry's face, took a deep breath, and said, "Happy seventeenth."_

_"Yeah . . . thanks."_

_She was looking at him steadily; he however found it difficult to look back at her, it was like gazing at a brilliant light._

_"Nice view," he said feebly, pointing toward the window._

_She ignored this. "I couldn't think what to get you," she confessed._

_"You didn't have to get me anything."_

_She disregarded this too. "I didn't know what would be useful. Nothing too big. because you wouldn't be able to take it with you."_

_Harry glanced at her, she __she __felt his emerald eyes pierce through her like a dagger. She was not tearful, she was determined at that. Having six brothers had made her that way. But she couldn't hide the sadness that filled the shadows in her eyes. The sadness that turned her warm, welcoming__ brown eyes__ dark and hollow._

_She took a step closer to him. "So, then I thought, I'd like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you're off doing whatever you're doing." _

_"I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest."_

_"There's the silver lining I've been looking for__," she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than firewhisky; he was the only real thing in the world, the one thing she couldn't stand to part with._

_After Ron burst through her bedroom, breaking them apart, Harry said, "I'll see you later," and followed the other two out of the bedroom._

_She had finally succumbed, for once, to tears. She wanted Harry to hold on to her and never let her go. She wanted to know that he would be safe, and that he would keep fighting and that he would stay strong. She wanted, no, she _needed_ his reassurance._

**Keep holding on, cause you know we'll make it through**

**we'll make it through**

**Just stay strong, cause you know I'm here for you**

**I'm hear for you**

_"Is everything okay, dear?" Her mother's voice drifted up to her from downstairs. In moments she was standing in the door way, peeking her head through to get a look at her daughter._

_Hermione sat at her desk with an open spell book, her hair pulled back into a pony tail, and tears fillin__g__her eyes. She did not look at her mum and wiped away tears with her sleeve and she replied, "Yeah, mum, I'm okay."_

_"It sounded like you were crying. Are you sure you're all right?" she had asked again._

_Hermione nodded. She knew that if she had told her mum everything that had been going on, she wouldn't understand. Not because she was stupid, or because she was a Muggle; Hermione knew her mum wouldn't understand because she wasn't Harry's friend. She hadn't seen everything they had been through. She hadn't known Ron, or any of the other Weasley's. She hadn't known Dumbledore._

_She slowly pulled her wand out from her pant__s__ pocket as she stood up. When she looked her mother in the eyes and pointed her wand at her forehead and very calmly said, "_Obliviate_."_

_Her mother glanced back at her with eyes of astonishment. "What a lovely little house you have here, Miss. Is your mother home? I would really like to meet her." Her mother rambbled for a few moments, and then realized that Hermione had been crying. "Oh, poor child, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"_

_Hermione couldn't help it, she reached out for her mother and hugged her as tightly as she could. She let the sobs fall out of her and cried into her mothers shoulder. Her mum, not remembering anything, simple hugged her back and tried to stop her tears._

_After a moment, Hermione pulled herself together and made her way down stairs to her father; her mum following closely behind, commenting on all the lovely pieces in the house._

_"Hermione?" Her father sounded worried as he saw her approach him in the sitting room, wand in her hand. "Is everything all right? Where's your mother?"_

I love you,_ she thought, _I'm sorry_. She raised her wand and erased her father's memory._

_With all the other preparations to move her parents to Australia complete, the only thing left to do was take them there. Mopping her eyes, Hermione__held both her mother's and father's hands in her own and Apparated to the small house in the countryside of Australia. She gave her parents a new life, a safer life. And as hard as it was to leave them behind, she had to. She couldn't take any chances._

_As she walked around her empty house__-__ the house she had grown up in; the house she had received her first letter from Hogwarts and the woman explained everything to her, that she was what they called "Muggle-born";__the house she loved__- she thought about what Harry and Ron would think of her when they found out what she had done. Especially Harry, what would he say? He was the one that didn't want her and Ron accompanying him in the first place._

- - - -

_"Listen," said Harry. He had sat up straight. Ron and Hermione looked at him with similar mixtures of resignation and defiance. "I know you said after Dumbledore's funeral that you wanted to come with me," Harry began._

_"Here he goes," Ron said to Hermione, rolling his eyes._

_"As we knew he would," she sighed, turning back to the books. "You know, I think I _will_ take _Hogwarts, A History_. Even if we're not going back there, I don't think I'd feel right if I didn't have to with-"_

_"Listen!" said Harry again._

_"No, Harry, _you_ listen," said Hermione. "We're coming with you. That was decided months ago- years, really.'_

_"But-"_

_'Shut up," Ron advised him._

_"-are you sure you've thought this through?" Harry persisted._

_"Let's see," said Hermione, slamming _Travels with Trolls _onto the discarded pile with a rather fierce look. "I've been packing for days, so we're ready to leave at a moment's notice, which for your information has included doing some pretty difficult magic, not to mention smuggling Mad-Eye's whole stock of Polyjuice Potion right under Ron's mum's nose. I've also modified my parents' memories so that they're convinced they're really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and that their life's ambition is to move to Australia, which they have now done. That's to make it more difficult for Voldemort to track them down and interrogate them about me- or you, because unfortunately, I've told them quite a bit about you. Assuming I survive our hunt for the Horcruxes, I'll find Mum and Dad and lift the enchantment. If I don't- well, I think I've cast a good enough charm to keep them safe and happy. Wendell and Monica Wilkins don't know that they've got a daughter, you see."_

_Hermione's eyes were swimming with tears again._

_"I-Hermione, I'm sorry- I didn't-"_

_"Didn't realize that Ron and I know perfectly well what might happen if we come with you? Well, we do."_

**There's nothing you can say, there's nothing you can do**

**There's no other way when It comes to the truth**

**So keep holding on, cause you know we'll make it through**

**we'll make it through**

Harry had left from the Burrow three weeks ago. It has been three weeks since the wedding that came to a halt when they announced the Ministry had fallen. It had barely been a week since the Death Eaters finally left the Burrow, but everyone knew they were still being watched.

Ginny found her self spending more and more time locked up in her room while she starred out her window at the orchard. She would spend her days worrying about Harry. Was he thinking of her? Where was he? Were the three of them safe? What exactly were they doing? How far away from each other were they?

Nothing made too much sense to her any more. At one point in her life, she believed that love was the strongest magic there was. She also believed that loving someone was enough reason to keep them by your side. But that seemed like ages ago. Now it seemed like everything she had once believed in turned out to be wrong. Ginny wanted to find something to believe in, something to hold onto.

But with the news with so many people dying and disappearing, it seemed like everything was spiraling out of control. There was no more order: the Death Eaters controlled the Ministry now. With every passing minute, there was the chance of everything she had once know, being pulled out from under her.

In the blink of an eye, Death Eaters could swarm the Burrow and her whole family could be gone.

In the blink of an eye, Voldemort could wave his wand and kill Harry.

In the blink of an eye... everything could change.

But then again, who ever said life was fair? Who ever said that she would live a fairy tale life?

The only two thing that were the constants in her life were the impending fear that grew every larger every second, and the knowledge that everything she once held dear could disappear.

And it would then be too late to tell Harry how much she really cared.

All those endless hours that turned into days that she stayed up in her room, she realized she would do anything to bring Harry back by her side. Because with him, she felt that she could do anything. That she didn't have to put on a front, she knew she could be herself. She knew that with Harry, he gave her a sense of security and she would do anything to defend that feeling. She finally let herself admit that she truly loved Harry. And now . . . it could all be taken away from her.

**So far away, I wish you were here**

**Before it's too late this could all disappear**

**Before the doors close and it comes to an end**

**With you by my side I will fight and defend, I'll fight and defend**

_Neither would live, neither could survive._

_He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?_

_If he could launch himself in front of someone he loved . . . He envied even his parents' deaths now, This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery. _

_Like rain on a cold window, these thought pattered against the hard surface of the incontrovertible truth, which was that he must die._ I must die_ It must end._

_Ron and Hermione seemed a long ways away, in a far-off country; he felt as though he had parted from them long ago. There would be no good-byes and no explanations, he was determined of that. This was a journey they could not take together, and the attempts they would make to stop him would waste valuable time._

_Ripples of cold undulated over Harry's skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there; he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home . . ._

_But he _was_ home. Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here . . ._

_Ginny was kneeling beside the __injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had sensed someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back._

_He closed his eyes his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times._

_James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley's._

_Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face._

_Lupin was younger too, and much less shabby, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back in this familiar place, scene of so many adolescent wanderings._

_Lily's smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough._

_"You've been so brave."_

_He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever and that would be enough._

_"You are nearly there," said James. "Very close. We are . . . so proud of you."_

_"Does it hurt?" The childish question had fallen from Harry's lips before he could stop it._

_"Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."_

**Keep holding on, cause you know we'll make it through, **

**We'll make it through**

_"You'll stay with me?" _

_"Until the very end," said James._

_"They won't see you?" asked Harry._

_"We are a part of you," said Sirius. "Invisible to anyone else."_

_Harry looked at his mother. "Stay close to me," he said quietly._

**Just stay strong, cause you know I'm here for you, I'm here for you**

**There's nothing you can say**

**There's nothing yo can do**

**There's no other way when it comes to the truth**

**So keep holding on, cause you knwo we'll make it through **

**We'll make it through**

_He saw the mought move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone._

_"I don't want anyone else to try and help," Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."_

_Voldemort hissed. "Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his read eyes wide. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"_

_"Nobody," said Harry simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good . . ."_

_"One of us?" jeered Voldemort. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"_

_"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asked Harry. They were still moving in a perfect circle. "Accident, when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"_

_"Accidents!" screamed Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and the watching crowd was frozen as if Petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to breathe but they two. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"_

_"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry as they circled, and stared into each other's eyes, green into red. "You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting people-"_

**Hear me when I say, when I say I believe**

**Nothings gonna change, nothings gonna change destiny**

_"But you did not!" countered Voldemort._

_"-I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"_

_One shivering second of silence, the shock of the moment suspended: and then the tumult broke around Harry as the screams and cheers and the roars of the watchers rent the air. The fierce new sun dazzled the windows as they thundered toward him, and the first to reach him were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around him, their incomprehensible shouts that defened him. Then Ginny, Neville, and Luna were there, and then all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and McGonagall and Flitwick and Sprout, and Harry could not hear a word that anyone was shouting, nor tell whose hands were seizing him, pulling him, trying to hug some part of him, hundreds of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was over at last-_

**Whatever's meant to be will work out perfectly**

**Keep holding on, cause you know we'll make it through we'll make it through**

**Just stay strong, cause you know I'm here for you**

**I'm here for you**

_Happiness would come, Harry thought, but at the moment it was muffled by exhaustion, and the pain of losing Fred and Lupin and Tonks pierced him like a physical wound every few steps. Most of all he felt the most stupendous relief, and a longing to sleep. But first he owed an explanation to Ron and Hermione, who had stuck with him for so long, and who deserved the truth._

**There's nothing you can say, there's nothing you can do**

**There's no other way when it come to the truth **

**So keep holding on **

_"And quite honestly," he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime."_

**Cause you know we'll make it through**

**We'll make it through**


End file.
